The Secret World Column: Wrapping up Christmas

Christmas is over, but that doesn’t mean the holiday celebration has ended… at least, not in the video game world. One thing I’ve always enjoyed about games is the effort some of them put into celebrating the holidays through events, dungeons, quests, items, etc. So, without further ado, I’d like to talk about some of the games that I feel really went out of their way to bring the holiday cheer to their community.

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Once again Aionbrought the holiday cheer with their Solorius event that started December 12 and goes into January 2, 2013. They’ve added in many quests that reward coins. The coins reward gear, dyes, housing items, and more. Not to mention their Black Cloud Marketplace has plenty of cool skins, weapons, home decorations, and more. Their Wheel of Fortunerk has a lot of awesome prices, including the chance to win a palance, something that seems only available through the wheel. Granted to spin the wheel and buy from the Marketplace you’ll have to spend real money in order to obtain the NCoin. Kind of the downside to this event.

Runescape’s 2012 Christmas event, “A Stray in a Manger,” took off. Players talk to the snow imp that has been put in charge of bringing holiday cheer to all the stray dogs in the world. Your task will be to find the dogs, clean them, and then find a home for them. Once you do so the rewards are plentiful. Not only do you get a stray dog of your own, but you get a Santa beard and the Gift of the Giving.

SW:TOR celebrated Life Day, a Wookiee holiday, by adding some items to their Cartel market for purchase. With this, many items were added, including a Life Day Orb that allows you to generate health and energy pool while the orb is displayed. Naturally, there are holiday decorations of sorts, a new mount, and more. There was no actual event planned, however. Something Bioware admitted to, though also stated that doesn’t mean they won’t do events in the future.

The Secret World isn’t necessarily doing a “holiday event” at the moment, but they are enjoying a mini apoc of their own with the End of Days event. All you have to do is go to the mission room to get started. Basically players complete various tasks and build points. Players in the top 1000 of points will get a special title, while the top 100 will receive a mini pet.

I’d say, at least in my own opinion, one of the games that has yet to really cease to amaze, especially in regards to events, is Guild Wars 2. Their Wintersday event has changed the world of Tyria, at least for now. They’ve added quests, dungeons, discoveries, a new jumping puzzle, and new items on the Black Lion Trading company. All of these will be available up until January 3rd of the new year. Though it didn’t seem possible to do, they’ve really outdone their Halloween event and, in my opinion at least, outdone the events of a lot of other games.

I could go on and on with a list of games that have holiday events and special items available, but we know that’d take forever and would basically be an essay.

I know this is the day after Christmas and you’re likely reading this like, “Why does this matter now?” But, you see... it does matter. Many of us have been busy leading up to this holiday and have about one more week left to enjoy some of these awesomely fun events and temporarily added features. I know that I will be going back and logging into some of the games to finally see what they have to offer.

Hopefully next year other games will be stepping up to the plate to compete with the likes of GW2.

Hillary Nicole / I'm a robot whose only purpose is to play video games. I mainly stick to MMOs, but have been programmed to also play console and PC games.
Games that I have played range from UO, WoW, Rift, Aion, Warhammer, League of Legends, Halo, Final Fantasy 7+, Dragon Age: Origins, Zelda: OoT, DoA, Xenogears, L4D, Chrono Cross, and Donkey Kong Country all the way to Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
I mainly play MMOs for the PvP. Seeing as Ultima Online was the first MMO I played, it kind of made me biased towards PvP content. However, there hasn't been a game with PvP quite as good as UO's (my opinion). Despite this, I've been able to enjoy FPS, RTS, and yes, even WoW's Arena and BG system.
Every now and then I get into raiding, questing, and sometimes tend to become an achievement whore and pet collector.
Don't forget to visit my Youtube channel to find my latest gameplay videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/PokketProductions
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